Good morning.
The clocks went back and apparently so did the sun. Welcome to November.
Hereâs what youâll find in todayâs newsletter:
Letâs get into it. đŤĄ
đŚ Shipping small orders into the EU? Your costs just went up.
As of November 1, the EU charges a âŹ2 handling fee per item on low-value parcels coming in from outside the bloc. Thatâs on top of the âŹ3 customs duty thatâs already been applied to each category of goods in parcels under âŹ150 since July.
And itâs not a flat âŹ5 per package. Depending on whatâs in the box, it could be a lot more.
Before holiday orders start shipping, check in with your shipping or customs partner. Ask which fees apply, whoâs collecting them, and whether your landed-cost numbers actually include them.
đ Your next post-purchase offer could be a gift card
@russell_kwokk has a BFCM idea for the thank-you page: offer a $100 gift card for $80.
It works for two kinds of holiday shoppers at once. Deal hunters get $20 of free money, and gift givers get a present without having to guess someoneâs size or favorite color.
If you try it, put a clear end date on it. Make sure gifting and redemption actually work. And check what happens to your margin if people can stack the credit with other discounts. Watch redemption and repeat purchases, not just the upfront revenue bump.
đ Google Search is doing great. Wall Street didnât care.
If you were worried AI was killing search⌠not yet. In Alphabetâs Q3 earnings, Google Search revenue grew 12% to $63.4 billion, and YouTube ads grew about 9% to $11.2 billion. Google also says search queries grew faster than they have in five years, including shopping-related ones.
Investors still werenât happy. Alphabet shares dropped sharply after the report, mostly over how much the company is spending on AI.
đ Redditâs ad business is booming, and it wants you logged in
Reddit pulled in $847 million in ad revenue last quarter, up 54% from last year.
Global daily active uniques grew 12% to 130.3 million, but US daily users dropped 2%. And Reddit says Google search referrals fell by more than a million visits a week on average in October.
So now it wants more people signed in. Reddit is testing a login requirement for most content in some markets outside the US this quarter. Logged-in users already drive more than 80% of its monetization, so it makes sense for them. For shoppers who click a Reddit thread from Google looking for product recs, though, itâs one more wall to get through.
If Reddit reviews or recommendation threads send you customers, keep an eye on that traffic as the test rolls out, especially from international markets. And if Reddit ads are on your test list, start with a product that fits a specific community and judge it on your own acquisition costs. Big ad growth is a good reason to look. It doesnât mean itâll work for your brand.
đŠ Your BFCM opt-in rate follows you all year
Black Friday sends more buyers through your opt-in consent flows than any other week. The subscribers you capture that weekend become the list you market to all next year.
Dataships optimizes forms, checkout, and confirmation pages, adapting every ask to the shopperâs location, language, and consent history. Brands on the platform average 81% email, 29% SMS, and 58% WhatsApp consent rates, with compliance built in.
X-bionic went live ahead of Black Friday and captured 3,000+ subscribers last November. Thatâs more than their previous setup managed in an entire quarter.
Setup takes 10 minutes, with no developer work.
*Â sponsored
đŻ Different creative, different audiences, one Meta ad set
We mentioned this one a couple weeks ago, but Pilothouse has been digging into how youâd actually use it, so hereâs the longer version.
Metaâs Choose an audience for each ad creative feature lets you pair individual creatives with an age range and gender, all inside one ad set. It went live for Marketing API partners on October 19.
So if youâve been splitting ad sets just to match creative to different demographics, thereâs another way to do it now. Think a winter coat ad aimed at one group and a lighter jacket at another, both running in the same ad set.
Why Pilothouse thinks itâs worth a look
Mostly, it could make your account a lot simpler. Youâd be able to tailor messaging without splitting budget across a bunch of ad sets that only exist because of age or gender.
And fewer ad sets could mean each one gets more conversion data to learn from. That said, Meta hasnât shared any performance results yet, so better efficiency is still a theory youâll want to test.
How to try it
A few catches
You need a broad demographic audience at the ad set level, and it canât run alongside Advantage+ audience. So itâs a different setup altogether, and you canât just switch it on in your current automation.
Itâs also not totally clear whether the creative-level settings are strict limits or more like suggestions. Donât assume an ad will only show to the group you picked. Special Ad Category rules still apply too.
With BFCM this close, start small. Run one contained test and see if pairing creative with audiences actually improves performance.
đ§ Good taste wonât save your brand from bad AI
As AI makes creative easier to produce, everyone suddenly seems to be talking about the importance of having âgood taste.â
Aves thinks marketers should be focused on something else.
In this episode of Ad-venturous, Aves argues that discernment may become one of the most important creative skills in an AI-heavy advertising world.
Taste is personal. Discernment is your ability to look at an idea, tool, or piece of creative and judge whether it actually makes sense for your brand.
Aves points to Liquid Death as a brand whose irreverent identity could give it more room to experiment with AI-generated creative.
A brand built around artistry and craftsmanship has a very different calculation.
Heavy AI usage could feel disconnected from the reason customers were attracted to it in the first place.
Thatâs the question she thinks creative teams should be asking as AI becomes unavoidable in advertising.
Does this actually make sense for our brand and the people weâre trying to reach?
âśď¸ Watch here | đ§ Listen on Spotify
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